


For I Have Sinned

by romanticalgirl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-11
Updated: 2013-05-11
Packaged: 2017-12-11 13:52:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/799449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl





	For I Have Sinned

He’d think it was funny if it didn’t all hurt so much. 

He stumbles into the foyer of 12 Grimmauld Place and leans on the door to shut it, unsure that he has the strength for anything else. His entire body is alive with pain and he’s almost certain it’s the only thing he’s truly felt in months.

He welcomes it.

He’s not sure how long he stands there, though he’s not even standing, his own feet too weak to hold him by themselves. He glances down and notices that the bottom of his robe has been burned away and starts to laugh, the sound growing louder and higher in pitch and intensity until the hard slap practically turns his head around.

“Thank you,” he pants. “To be a cliché, I needed that.”

“You need far more, Lupin,” Snape assured him as he continued toward the kitchen. The seething rage of Mrs. Black’s voice penetrated the haze that surrounded Remus and he managed a smile, following Snape. 

Filth! Blood traitor!

“What on earth did you do to her?”

“I walked by.”

Remus nodded and moved to the opposite side of the room as the reached the kitchen, heading straight for the stove. He picked up the kettle and tilted it, listening to the water slosh before setting it back on the burner. “Tea?”

“No.”

Remus pulled two cups from the cabinet and set tealeaves in the bottom. “Was her cover off?”

“I didn’t stop to look, Lupin.” Snape’s voice was still waspish, though not sharp, more dull and tired. “I do my best to avoid the portraits in this damn house. Between them and that vile house elf, it’s a wonder I haven’t been killed outright.”

Remus stared down at the teacups, the leaves full and perfectly still. “Why do you risk so much, Severus?” He sensed the movement behind him, could almost see Snape’s chin rise, settling above the firm collar of his robes. “It’s killing all of us slowly, but you…”

“I don’t need your pity, Lupin.”

“I didn’t realize I was offering it.” Remus pulled the kettle from the stove and poured steaming water into both cups. He stared into them as it swirled and eddied turbulently then set the kettle down and picked them up. He slid one in front of Snape then reached for the sugar bowl. “Curiosity, perhaps. But I would never go so far as to offer you pity.”

“How does it feel, Lupin? To know now that all your friends are dead?”

Remus stirred brown sugar into his tea, his hand never faltering in its slow, methodical circle. “None of them, however, killed by my own hand. Or razored teeth.” He set the spoon on the saucer and lifted his cup, meeting Snape’s black eyes. “Killed, perhaps, through my unthinking or my suspicion or my lack of action, but the blood on my hands is all metaphorical.”

“That doesn’t make it any less due atonement.”

Remus nodded and took a sip of his tea. He closed his eyes, savoring the hint of mint that floated in the steam and bathed his face. After a long moment, he set the cup down and met Snape’s eyes. “My atonement is this.”

Snape’s face closed down, tightening to unreadable. “Is my conversation so tedious, then, Lupin?”

“Not this, Severus.” He smiled lightly, the corners of his mouth barely turning as he realized he’d called Snape by his given name twice. “This house, this…” He gestured under the table to the burned robe. “Every mission is my debt to James and Lily still gone unpaid. To keep Harry from hunting out the veil and slipping past it to find Sirius is my debt, my atonement.” He sighed. “My life is my atonement.”

“Such delusions of grandeur, Lupin.” Snape shook his head slightly, eyebrows raised mockingly. “But then, you were always best at absorbing blame that was never yours.” 

“The blame for what I am, I assure you, rests solely on my shoulders.”

“Or on the shoulders of that what made you what you are.” Snape finally picked up his tea and toasted Lupin with it. “Atonement means nothing if you’re not truly guilty of what you’re seeking to rectify.”

Remus smiled and shook his head, “And I’m suffering from the delusions? Do go on, Severus, how is your crime worse than mine?”

“Do you not wonder,” Snape asked silkily, “Why it is I do this for Dumbledore? Or do you truly believe I subject myself to all of this out of the goodness of my heart?”

“Sirius was convinced you didn’t have one.”

“Black,” Snape spit out the word, “knew nothing of me.”

Remus’s eyebrow shot up and he nodded, acquiescing the point. “We know what Death Eaters do, Severus. Curses and potions made to further the cause of Voldemort’s war.”

“And, after letting them burn this into my skin,” Snape pulled the arm of his robe just high enough to expose the flaring heat that edged the tattoo, “I suddenly felt badly and decided to risk my life?” He laughed bitterly. “The House of Snape, I assure you, is not nearly so noble.”

Remus sucked in air, Sirius’s familiar and haunting words echoed deliberately in Snape’s. “You obviously feel the need to confess, Severus, though why I’m your chosen priest, I’m unsure.”

“It has to be you,” he assured him, his voice still velvety with intention. “You’ll understand. And hate me. It’s vital that you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, Severus.”

“I was recruited, if that is the word, to Voldemort’s cause while still in school. Not that most of us needed urging. His need for Wizard supremacy and the call to all purebloods had Slytherin in a nearly manic state our seventh year. Fights broke out throughout the dormitory as the more levelheaded students refused to join outright. If they didn’t open support us, they were against us.”

“How very Germanic.”

“Muggle history is not so different from our own.” Snape watched Remus as he took a drink of tea, followed the cup back to its saucer. “I was eager to join. Blood-traitors were of interest to me. I had a few very particular victims in mind at the start.”

“Is that what we were? Your victims?”

“As I was yours.” Snape acknowledged with a tilt of his head. “I was…targeted, for lack of a better word, by certain members of Voldemort’s inner circle. I received the Dark Mark long before most of the others in my house had. The summer before our seventh year.”

Remus gave one slow nod and spooned more sugar into his now cool tea, watching the granules hang suspended in the liquid for a moment before disappearing. 

“I had watched all of you for years. We knew that you would all be at the core of Dumbledore’s fight.” He paused, his hand balling into a fist and sliding off the table. “I was told to find the weakest link in your armor. I found Pettigrew.”

“Peter…?”

“Black had begun his campaign to get back into your good graces. Potter was besotted with Evans. Pettigrew was suddenly left at very loose ends. Being told to sod off every time he attempted to tag along with Black, being told to go wank on his own time whenever he tried to hang out with Potter. And you, you were a recluse until you fell under Black’s spell again.”

“Peter’s defection was all our fault then?” Remus’s voice was tightly controlled as he raised an eyebrow again, matching Snape’s gaze with his own. “We failed to meet his needs to he ran to Voldemort for comfort?”

“He felt he’d been used to serve a purpose that was no longer needed. So we gave him a new purpose. Extorted it as a higher purpose. We showed him what it was and he saw it as what he needed.” Snape shrugged. “I was there the night Voldemort held his arm and traced the Dark Mark, burning it beneath his skin where it wouldn’t show, wouldn’t give him away to you.”

Remus lifted his chin, staring at the wall beyond Snape’s head. “Did it hurt him?”

“Voldemort would not do anything that did not hurt.” Snape sighed and turned his head toward the door of the kitchen, watching the shadows shift in the hallway outside. “It gives none of them pleasure if it does not hurt.”

“Does it give you pleasure?”

“Nothing in this world gives me pleasure, Lupin.” 

“Then I was wrong, Severus. You do have my pity.”

He snarled as his gaze snapped to Remus’s, the dark hair falling over his shoulders. “I brought your friend to the dark side. That is why I play this stupid charade for Dumbledore, why I suffer the idiocy of Gryffindors in my classroom. Why I long for death on both sides of the fence. What I atone for.”

“Peter had darkness in him long before you tempted him with it.” Remus got to his feet and moved over to the stove, tilting back the lid of the teakettle and staring down into the water, as if he could read it like tea leaves. “It’s not atonement, Severus. It’s forgiveness. And I doubt that either of us will ever find it. Certainly not in this house, and not at the end of the war. Voldemort will be defeated and everyone will simply assume it’s their due that they continue living the lives they’ve grown accustomed to and they won’t mourn the dead, won’t even know them. There is no forgiveness. Their children cannot offer it to us. And we could not accept it, even if they could.”

Remus turned and watched Snape for a long moment. The dark eyes stared back at him, nothing visible in their depths. “No forgiveness? No atonement?” Remus knew the words were supposed to be biting, mocking, sarcastic. “Then what, pray tell, do we fight for?”

Remus carried the kettle to the table and poured more water in his cup, destroying the pattern he refused to read in the tea leaves. “Absolution.”


End file.
